Popeye
Popeye is a sailor character and protagonist appearing in comics and animated cartoons, known for his squinting (or entirely missing) right eye, huge forearms, skinny upper arms, and corncob pipe. He can occasionally be seen smoking his pipe but usually he toots it like a tugboat and sometimes uses it as a weapon by blowing the smoke in his enemies faces. He is unusually strong and can lift heavy objects over his head but to gain a boost in strength to defeat an enemy he eats spinach. He is known to mutter when he speaks and mispronounce words (e.g, he calls elephants and infants "elephinks" and "infinks"). During the World War II shorts, he was a member of the U. S. Navy and could occasionally be seen fighting the Germans and Japanese. The ones in which he did have sometimes been banned from television for being politically incorrect. Character history Popeye was created in 1929 by E. C. Segar in his comic strip Thimble Theatre (inspired by a local man, Frank "Rocky" Fiegel) and was popular enough to be be adapted into animation. In the various cartoons he would usually have to rescue his girlfriend Olive Oyl from Bluto/Brutus, his rival and sometimes friend. Some of the cartoons take a different approach, like him rescuing Olive from another threat, dealing with something alone, fighting a small enemy he can't beat, or watching over his adopted son Swee'Pea. During the WWII years, Popeye changed into a white Navy suit, continuing to look like this in animation from the 1940's through to the 1960's. Plots have changed as well. In 1940's shorts, Popeye gained four nephews named Pipeye, Peepeye, Poopeye, and Pupeye, whose exact relation to Popeye remains unclear. In the fifties, animation rights to Popeye were sold from Paramount studios to a.a.p. company. Animated shows were also made for television in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's, and in 1980 a theatrical movie called Popeye was released and went on to gross $49,823,037; more than double the film's production budget. A more recent television movie called Popeye's Voyage: The Quest for Pappy was made in 2004, produced by Mainframe Entertainment for Lions Gate Entertainment and King Features Entertainment. Urban legend Rumor has it that in September 1938 head of Fleischer Studios Max Fleischer, as a thank-you to all artists who moved to his new animation studio in Florida, animated a graphic sexual encounter between his two stars, Betty Boop and Popeye. Reports on this supposed film, known as “''Welcome to Miami'',” range from it being 30 seconds of pencil drawings to a full-color short film. Voiced/Portrayed by Over the years, Popeye has been voiced by many different people: William Costello (a.k.a. Red Pepper Sam) from 1933 to 1935, Jack Mercer from 1935 until his death in 1984, Maurice LaMarche from 1985 to 1990 and Billy West from the 2004 telefilm. Additionally, he has been voiced by Harry Welch and Jackson Beck during the brief time Jack Mercer served in World War II, David Coulier in parody appearances on the animated show Robot Chicken and Jim Cummings on commercials. In the live-action movie he was portrayed by Robin Williams, with Popeye being the actor's first film role. Gallery POPEYE.gif 223.jpg Cartoon popeye-5344.jpg Ytreye.jpg The-Nutritional-Value-of-Spinach.gif Popeyes spinach-5345.jpg External links * Popeye | The Home of Popeye the Sailor Man website * [http://www.toonopedia.com/popeye.htm Don Markstein's Toonopedia Popeye page] * Popeye at the Internet Movie Database Category:Characters Category:popeye the sailor